Tag: Ed King 2210

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BPREVIEW: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club @ O2 Academy 28.10.17

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club @ O2 Academy 28.10.17 / Tessa Angus

Words by Ed King / Pic by Tessa Angus

On Saturday 28th October, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ride through Birmingham – coming to the O2 Academy as part of their nine date UK tour (plus one in Dublin). 

Doors open at 7pm, with tickets priced at £28.65 (including booking fee) – as presented by SJM Concerts/Gigs and Tours. For direct gig info, including venue details and online tickets sales, click here.

Responsible for one of the best debut albums ever… yep, I went there… Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have been tearing up the asphalt on both sides of the pond (and beyond) since 1998. Some call them ‘shoegaze’, some all them ‘grunge’, some call them ‘garage rock’, but Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have a distinctive twisted metal sound that they can comfortable call their own. ‘Fucking awesome’ is where I personally land, but with well over 200,000 words in the English language I’m sure you can come up with a more erudite description. Or you could just listen.

Globetrotting with a new album in the wings, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are coming to Birmingham to push their impending new album – Wrong Creatures, which will, apparently, possibly, be with us just after Christmas.

But having waited half a decade since their last LP, the 12 track monster that is Specter at the Feast, a few months here or there won’t bite down too hard. At least I’ll have something to spend those iTunes vouchers on, that will no doubt appear in some relative’s Hallmark hug this December (…other online music downloads are available).

Having recorded and released on their own imprint since 2008 (starting with the download only The Effects of 333) Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have been able to reinvent and reiterate all the cogs in their machine, drifting from the Native American rhythms of ‘Beat the Devil’s Tattoo’, passing through the dark rock heart of ‘War Machine’ and ‘Teenage Disease’, to stand still at the morbid curiosity of ‘Fire Walker’. Awesome. Relentless. Lots of other words; 24rs spent ploughing through this band’s back catalogue would not be a day wasted. Even if you’re wasted.

Now there’s another album in the offing too, and whilst we don’t know much about Wrong Creatures here’s a little taste of what’s to come… and yeah, that’ll do. The rest we’ll get to see/hear coming off stage at the O2 Academy on Say 28th October.

‘Little Thing Gone Wild’ – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

For more on Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, visit www.blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com

For more from the O2 Academy Birmingham, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham

For more from SJM Concerts/Gigs and Tours, visit www.gigsandtours.com

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BPREVIEW: The Black Angels @ O2 Institute 26.09.17

The Black Angels @ O2 Institute 26.09.17

Words by Ed King

On Tuesday 26th September, The Black Angels land in Birmingham at the 02 Institute – performing live, with support from A Place to Bury Strangers + Mass Datura. 

Doors open at 7pm with tickets priced at £19.50, as presented by Kilimanjaro Live and This Is Tmrw. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Out on the road with their fifth studio album, Death Song, The Black Angels are in Birmingham as part of only a handful of UK dates on their Death March Tour. Sandwiched in-between a gig in Glasgow and another in Bristol, the O2 Institute in Birmingham is the second date the Texan psych-rockers will be playing in Blighty. Although The Black Angels did play at the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia 2017, but who’s going to prove any of that actually happened. Or maybe it never stopped…

Four years since their last LP, Death Song came out on Partisan Records in April this year, with an extensive North American tour introducing the album stateside. A clear hat tip to the Velvet Underground – as in ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song’, from that record they made with that blonde lass – the new album from The Black Angels has been described by Phil Mongredien in The Guardian as a ‘menacing return to form’, further stating the 11 track LP harks back to ‘the threatening drones that made their first two so powerful’.

With a line up that makes the bill sound like a blueprint for Jonestown II, The Black Angels are supported by New York noise-rockers, A Place to Bury Strangers – alongside London’s self described ‘sunshine doom’ four piece, Mass Datura. So a nice quiet night in then… pass the shrooms and absinthe, Franz.

Having munched enough blotter acid to stop a heard of migrating springbok, Google it, I’m not sure another dark spiral is what this piece of psychedelic driftwood needs on a Tuesday.

But with only three dates in the UK, if you want a sneaky quarter of The Black Angels then you’d better get your game face on. Bit of a coup that they’re coming to Birmingham. In the meantime here’s a tiny taste of their new album:

‘Currency’ – The Black Angels

The Black Angels comes to the O2 Institute on 26th September, with support from A Place to Bury Strangers + Mass Datura – as presented by Kilimanjaro Live and This Is Tmrw. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here. 

For more on The Black Angels, visit www.theblackangels.com 

For more on A Place to Bury Strangers, visit www.aplacetoburystrangers.com

For more on Mass Datura, visit www.soundcloud.com/mass-datura 

For more from the O2 Institute, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2institutebirmingham

For more from Kilimanjaro Live, visit www.kilimanjarolive.co.uk

For more from This Is Tmrw, visit www.thisistmrw.co.uk